Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 22, 1994 TAG: 9402240020
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
While there is cause to hope that Virginia Tech or the Virginia Department of Transportation or both will be part of the effort, membership has not been formally secured. In fact, Virginia's drive to join the application for $150 million in funding has come belatedly, after GM already has formed a consortium with several partners.
Which just goes to show why the Allen administration's campaign to encourage Virginia's inclusion in the deal is so welcome.
Gov. Allen has written a letter to Jack Smith, GM's chief executive officer, offering to build the first two miles of the six-mile "smart road" from Blacksburg to Interstate 81, if GM and Virginia win the federal contract.
This portion of the road would serve as a test bed for developing and demonstrating prototype smart cars. (Smart cars will house computers that can communicate with electronic sensors in the road to improve safety and move traffic more smoothly.)
Can you imagine the possibilities? Not only would research money be attracted and spent here. The profile of these parts would be raised considerably as engineers, entrepreneurs and others from around the country and the world would visit to observe what's going on.
Some might stay. There'd be a real possibility of developing, as Roanoke Mayor David Bowers has suggested, a research-industrial park with smart-car engineers and suppliers at the core.
Tech on its own had a shot at getting involved with the federal project; last year, it was named one of America's three "research centers of excellence" in Intelligent Vehicle/Highway Systems. Now, with Allen's show of leadership - and his offer of an attractive incentive - Virginia stands a much better chance of playing a role.
Allen reportedly was persuaded of the smart road's significance - and the wisdom of making the appeal to GM - by his new secretary of transportation, Robert Martinez. Martinez himself was persuaded after meeting with smart-road backers including professor/promoter Antoine Hobeika, who directs Tech's Center for Transportation Research.
At a breakfast talk at Tech last week, Martinez called the project a "tremendous opportunity for economic growth." He's right.
Yet, predictably, two concerns are being raised.
Will Allen's promise to pay for the first two miles of the smart road with $11 million in state road-construction money compete with, and thereby endanger, funding for a planned bypass linking Blacksburg and Christiansburg?
No. For one thing, as Martinez noted on Friday, national highway money will fund the bypass. Smart-road funds will come from other pockets.
For another, the two projects don't compete. As roads handling traffic, they'll work together to reduce congestion already afflicting the New River Valley. As economic-development projects, they are miles apart. One is a road. The other is something else.
Does the governor's newfound interest in the smart road - in contrast with the previous administration, which provided not a penny - represent a betrayal of this area's non-business interests in general and the Ellett Valley's beauty in particular?
Some will believe that, no matter what the project's potential benefits - especially jobs - for the region. "It's just going to be devastating," says Shireen Parsons, president of the New River Valley Sierra Club.
It may be devastating to the Sierra Club. It won't help the beauty of the Ellett Valley, through which the road is to be built. And keep in mind: Because competition for the federal funding is intense and the extent of GM's interest in Virginia isn't known, it may not happen at all.
But if this region has a chance of becoming the site of the nation' test track for smart highways, with all the opportunities that would entail, it would be silly not to pursue the possibility. Gov. Allen is to be commended for joining the hunt.
by CNB